Planned Parenthood will soon open its first mobile abortion clinic in southern Illinois to circumvent abortion bans that have taken hold in neighboring states.
The mobile clinic is an outfitted 37-foot RV and will have two exam rooms, a lab and a waiting room. At first, it will only provide abortion pills, but Planned Parenthood told multiple outlets that it will start providing surgical abortions after the first few months.
A spokesperson for the organization told Axios that it will begin seeing patients either later in October or in early November.
The mobile clinic will be stationed in southern Illinois so women from nearby Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee and even Texas — all of which have banned abortion after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade this summer — can receive the procedure.
“Our goal is to reduce the hundreds of miles that people are having to travel now in order to access care…and meet them where they are,” Yamelsie Rodriguez, president of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis region and Southwest Missouri, told NPR.
Planned Parenthood said its clinic in Fairview Heights, Illinois, which is 20 miles from St. Louis, has seen a 30% increase in abortion patients since the Supreme Court ruling.
The organization also said that the Fairview Heights clinic has seen a 340% increase in patients coming from outside of Missouri and Illinois since Roe v. Wade was overturned.
• This article was based in part on wire service reports.
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